Yoga for Kids In Thornapple Kellogg Schools

Always great to read about yoga for kids in schools and even more fun, personally, when it’s Sing Song Yoga!

Thornapple Kellogg Schools recently published an article from which the below text was taken and can be read in its entirety as Kindergarten Students Find Calm in Yoga at TKschools.org. Thank you TK schools for using our program regularly and for sharing it with your readers! We so appreciate it!

Some highlights from TK Schools’ article follow:

McFall Elementary kindergarten teachers have found yoga helps their students transition between lessons, take “brain breaks” and even find calm during a hectic day.

“I love it. It makes me feel good,” said Aubree after about 15 minutes of yoga right in her classroom.

Kindergarten classmate Dylan Wallach gladly showed off his strength and balance in a balancing frog pose and Cameron Mancuso said his favorite yoga pose is “the one where we get to roar like a lion.”

Carissa Caskey said she likes the fish sit the best. “I just love how it makes me feel better when we’re done,” she said of the yoga stretches. “I feel happy.”

At least once or twice a week, McFall kindergarten teacher Jasmine Koster has her students practicing yoga in the classroom with a program called “Sing Song Yoga” developed especially for children. Students follow yoga pose instructions given in a sing-song version using music and rhythm.

“We use it in between lessons as a transitional tool. It reinforces concentration and gives students a brain break,” said Koster. “The afternoons can sometimes get long and we just need to have a little break and a little calm.”

Koster said she’s thrilled to be able to combine her two passions – teaching kindergarten and doing yoga. She’s been teaching at McFall four years and been practicing yoga for about six years. She started incorporating Sing Song Yoga in her classroom immediately. She said most of the other kindergarten teachers at McFall also use the program developed by Deb Weiss-Gelmi.

Koster said she sees many benefits to using yoga in the classroom.

“Sing Song Yoga is a great way to transition from one lesson to the next as a way for the students to refocus their attention and concentration,” Koster said. “It has been a wonderful tool to help create a sense of calm within our classroom.”

She said it also helps students realize the importance of caring for their bodies. “I see their flexibility, coordination and strength improving. And that’s really fun to watch progress.”

She said she also loves seeing how proud the students are of themselves when they master a new pose for the first time. “They are so excited and so proud. It just helps build their self-confidence, ” she said.

“We’re not meant to sit still all day. So getting up and doing something physical is important. Yoga involves concentration, but it’s also very calming and a good way to get kids out of their seats for awhile,” she said.

Since using the program in her classroom, Koster said parents have started using it at home as well. “I always get really positive feedback from the families,” said Koster. “Some of them use Sing Song Yoga at home now as a calming exercise before bed or sometimes when they (students) just have a stressful situation at home.”

Weiss-Gelmi came up with Sing Song Yoga as a way of using music, movement and fun together to naturally help students physically and emotionally. [The] Sing Song Yoga [app] offers the ability to create individualized yoga sequences or choose from one of the 39 preprogrammed sequences already in place. There are preprogrammed sequences designed specifically for brain breaks or test preps.

Koster said the beauty of the program is that anyone can do it and students may continue to find yoga a useful tool in their lives long after kindergarten.